Austria held its first national animal rights conference on September
5-8, 2002, in Vienna. The keynote speakers included Joan Dunayer,
author of Animal Equality: Language and Liberation (distributed by
Lantern Books; reviewed at
http://www.upc-online.org/summer2001/animal_equality.html ). An
English version of Dunayer's September 6 speech, "Gleichberechtigung
für Tiere," follows.

Animal Equality

by

Joan Dunayer

When I was writing Animal Equality, a friend questioned the book's
title. Did I really mean to say that all animals are equal? Yes, I
did. Like human equality, animal equality doesn't mean equal
abilities. It means that all animals have an equal right to moral
consideration and legal protection. And by "all animals" I mean all
sentient beings, every creature who can feel. It's reasonable and
right to treat any creature with a nervous system as sentient.
Reasonable because of the shared ancestry and physiological
similarities of all nervous systems. Reasonable because creatures
with a nervous system act as if they feel. Right because we should
give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to moral consideration.
Because all beings who can feel need protection, all beings who can
feel are entitled to rights. The sole criterion for rights should be
sentience.

Some animal rights theorists disagree with that. In his new book
Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights, lawyer
Steven Wise argues that the animals "most deserving" of legal rights
have "certain advanced mental abilities." According to Wise, an
animal is entitled to basic rights if they can desire, can act with
the aim of getting what they desire, and have some sense of self,
however dim. In my view, all sentient beings probably satisfy these
criteria. They ingest food and do other things, such as hide
themselves or flee, that indicate some sense of self, some sense that
it is they who need food, it is they who are in danger. But Wise
actually has stricter criteria in mind. He requires that animals
demonstrate human-like mental abilities in situations contrived, or
at least observed, by professional researchers, such as laboratory
experimenters.

For example, Wise treats mirror tests of self-recognition as
indicators of whether or not an animal is self-aware. In the standard
mirror self-recognition test, a researcher places a red mark on the
forehead of an anesthetized animal. If, when the animal awakens and
looks into a mirror, they touch the mark, they're assumed to have
self-recognition because they identified the image in the mirror as
their own. Wise admits that some animals have failed mirror
self-recognition tests apparently because of visual rather than
cognitive difficulties, such as the mirror's being too small for
their body size. When the test has been modified, members of their
species have passed. The mirror self-recognition test requires that
nonhuman animals recognize themselves using humans' primary means of
recognizing individuals: sight rather than, say, smell or feel.

Wise's approach is beset with practical and ideological problems.
First, his approach makes it impossible for most animals ever to
obtain legal rights. He requires that a sense of self be proven (his
word). Given that there are millions of animal species, this would
mean endless research. Indeed, in his book, Wise repeatedly calls for
more research. He heavily cites experimentation on animals held
captive in laboratories. Based on such research, he grades animals on
their supposed degree of autonomy. Reserved for humans, a score of 1
signifies the highest level of autonomy. To qualify for basic legal
rights, an animal must receive an autonomy score of .7 or higher. As
determined by Wise, so far only six species "clearly" qualify for
rights: humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and
bottle-nosed dolphins. With less confidence, Wise also advocates
rights for African gray parrots and, provisionally, African
elephants. He warns: if a mirror self-recognition test is given to
some African elephants and they fail, he'll drop their species'
autonomy score to .68 or lower, ousting African elephants from the
category of those who qualify for rights. "We do not know enough"
about "most species" to determine whether they possess sufficient
autonomy for basic rights, Wise says. Apparently, "most species" are
out of luck until "we," actually he, does know enough.

In his first book, Rattling the Cage, Wise completely dismissed the
idea that insects might reason. I told him I knew of much evidence
that honeybees and other insects reason. He requested references. The
evidence I supplied included the following: When a honeybee colony
requires a new hive site, honeybee scouts search for a cavity of
suitable location, dryness, and size. Each scout evaluates potential
sites and reports back, dancing about the site that she most
recommends. A honeybee scout may advertise one site over a period of
days, but she repeatedly inspects her choice. She also examines sites
proposed by others. If a sister's find proves more desirable than her
own, the honeybee stops advocating her original choice and starts
dancing in favor of the superior site. In other words, she's capable
of changing her mind and her "vote." Eventually colony members reach
a consensus.

More evidence: Researchers at Princeton University showed some
captive honeybees food placed on a boat in the middle of a lake. When
the honeybees were released to return to their nearby hive, they
communicated the food's location to their sisters. No bees set out to
the food. Then the researchers moved the food to the lake's far
shore. Again they showed the location to captive honeybees. Again the
bees flew back to their hive and told their sisters where to find the
food. Guess what? This time many other bees promptly set out, flying
over the lake to the food. Honeybees have a mental map of their
environment. A water location, in the middle of a lake, didn't make
sense. But the new location--on land--was plausible. Honeybees assess
the information they receive and believe or disbelieve depending on
its plausibility. To his "amazement and horror," Wise found such
evidence compelling. He now credits honeybees with the ability to
reason.

Well, he shouldn't have been so surprised. The ability to reason has
survival value for insects just as it does for humans. However,
although honeybees apparently form opinions and change their minds,
understand concepts such as "same" and "different," communicate
information such as the direction and distance to a food source using
a system of abstract symbols, and show other evidence of reasoning
ability, they don't qualify for rights according to Wise. Why not?
Because, he says, they're invertebrates. If they were
vertebrates--like us--he'd grade them .75 or .8, and they'd qualify
for rights. Too bad, honeybees.

Similarly, although the African gray parrot Alex "has demonstrated
extraordinary mental abilities for an animal with a walnut-sized
brain," Wise doesn't place African gray parrots among the animals who
incontestably deserve rights. They're too evolutionarily distant from
humans, he says. Their cognitive abilities may have developed
independently of ours, along a different ancestral line. So, even if
African gray parrots possess the abilities in question, they
shouldn't receive full credit for them if the origin of those
abilities differs from the origin of our same abilities. That's like
saying that my 1998 Honda Civic is better than yours because yours
came from a different dealer. Less closely related to humans doesn't
mean less intelligent, even if we define intelligence as human-like
intelligence. Octopuses apparently have more human-like intelligence
than frogs do, but we're far more closely related to frogs.

When Wise condescendingly refers to a parrot's "walnut-sized brain,"
he's the small-minded one. Humans pride themselves on possessing a
large brain, but elephants and many cetaceans have bigger, heavier
brains than ours, with more nerve cells. For their body weight, many
small birds and mammals have heavier brains than we do. The brains of
many small vertebrates show greater neural density and
interconnectedness. Larger brains are not necessarily more efficient
or powerful than smaller brains.

Wise advocates assessing the intelligence of nonhuman animals by
giving them tests designed for human children, even though, by his
own admission, tests designed for children may not be valid for
nonhumans. Comparing nonhumans to human children insults nonhumans.
Some birds, such as Clark's nutcrackers, can remember thousands of
soil locations in which they've buried seed. What test designed for
children, or even adult humans, possibly could reveal that? If
captive adult gorillas and bottle-nosed dolphins seem to resemble
human children, it's because certain humans choose to view them that
way and because they've been placed in stultifying environments that
allow scant expression of their natural adult nonhuman abilities.

According to Wise, the more a nonhuman's mind appears to be "simpler"
than a child's--or "just different"--the weaker their claim to
rights. Equating "different from humans" with "lesser" is the essence
of speciesism. Biologically, men differ from women and every
individual human differs from every other, but the differences aren't
morally relevant because all humans, provided that they're sentient,
equally need and deserve moral consideration. The same is true of
humans and nonhumans. The differences aren't morally relevant to the
issue of basic rights.

Wise's arguments are riddled with contradictions. Using a man with an
IQ of 10 as an example, Wise notes that some humans have "little"
autonomy. At the same time that Wise acknowledges a wide range of
human autonomy, he treats nonhuman autonomy as basically constant
across any particular species. In Wise's scheme, if Alex the African
gray parrot shows sufficient human-like intelligence to qualify for
rights, all African gray parrots qualify. If half a dozen African
elephants fail mirror self-recognition tests, no African elephants
will qualify for rights. In reality, mental capacities and other
traits vary widely within nonhuman species, just as they do among
humans.

Wise defends his emphasis on autonomy on the grounds that judges
think in terms of autonomy. No they don't, not unless a particular
case raises the issue of autonomy. And even then, judges don't treat
sentient humans who apparently have little autonomy as things without
rights. As Wise himself notes, courts regard humans with an IQ of 10
as having rights. Judges consider the well-being of young children
and other humans who lack sufficient autonomy to make important
decisions regarding their own welfare. In such instances, the court
or a guardian makes the decision, with consideration given to the
individual's best interest. Whether or not bottle-nosed dolphins are
autonomous, when dolphins acquire rights humans will have to act as
their legal guardians. A dolphin can't ask the court to liberate them
from an aquaprison or laboratory. Humans have to do that. Given that
nonhuman animals can't plead their own case or state their preferred
fate in a court of law, what's the point--moral or legal--of
attempting to assess their degree of autonomy?

Wise says that he assesses nonhuman autonomy in terms of human
intelligence because "the law measures nonhuman animals with a human
yardstick." The law doesn't measure nonhuman capacities. It measures
nonhumans' financial and, to much lesser extent, emotional value to
humans. It regards nonhumans as property. And isn't the goal to
change the way the law views nonhuman animals?

Wise fails to provide any cogent, logically consistent reason for his
severely restrictive autonomy criteria. Nor does he provide any
evidence that the sort of radical change needed to emancipate
nonhumans can come about through judicial opinion rather than
legislation. Wise repeatedly compares nonhuman enslavement to the
former enslavement of blacks in America. Well, judicial opinion
didn't free blacks. Judicial opinions repeatedly reinforced blacks'
property status as slaves. Legislation freed blacks. And it freed all
of them, not just those with the whitest skin, not just those who
would have scored .7 or higher in whiteness.

We need to create the same kind of moral outrage that American
abolitionists created about black enslavement, until the groundswell
of public opinion forces legislation that recognizes sentience as the
basis for rights. If some individual judge rules that a chimpanzee is
a rights-holder because the chimpanzee shows human-like intelligence
rather than because the chimp is sentient, we'll have set the wrong
kind of precedent. We don't want a few nonhuman animals to be
regarded as honorary humans. We want to get rid of humanness as the
basis for rights.

Philosopher Peter Singer has praised Wise for supposedly answering
the question "Where should we draw the line?" with regard to which
beings should receive the moral consideration vouchsafed by legal
rights. The answer always has been far simpler than Singer or Wise
would have us believe. The line should be drawn between all sentient
beings and all insentient things. If a creature has a nervous system,
it's reasonable to assume that they can feel. If they can feel, they
need protection--that is, legal rights. End of story.

Actually, Singer doesn't believe that any animals, including humans,
should have inviolable rights. He believes that an individual's
well-being or life can be sacrificed to the "greater good." In other
words, you can enslave me, or a cow, if that enslavement will
substantially improve or prolong the lives of others. You can
vivisect me, or a mouse, if (you really have to stretch your
imagination for this one) vivisecting me or a mouse will save
numerous lives. Although Singer has advocated moral consideration for
all sentient beings, he doesn't consider all animals equally entitled
to life. In fact, he's referred to some animals, such as fishes, as
"replaceable." Abusers do the same thing: they speak of "replacement
calves," "replacement sows"... In Singer's view, because most humans
have social ties, a "high degree of self-awareness," and a "vivid
sense of their own existence over time," most humans have richer,
more valuable lives than fishes, chickens, and most other nonhumans
and are, therefore, more entitled to live.

Like Wise's arguments, Singer's are muddled. First, chickens and many
fishes actually do form deep, lasting relationships when permitted to
do so. Second, the traits cited by Singer as increasing the quality
of a life also can decrease it: social ties cause grief as well as
joy; thoughts of past and future cause regret and fear as well as
satisfaction. Third, we can't know a nonhuman's degree of
self-awareness or calculate how richly they experience life. Is the
pleasure that a dog feels running through a meadow, or a lizard feels
basking in the sun, or a condor feels soaring at great height more or
less than the pleasure that a musician feels listening to a Mozart
concerto? No one can say. In fact, to some extent, it depends on the
individual dog, lizard, condor, and musician. Fourth, Singer's
disrespect for chickens, fishes, and so many other nonhuman animals
is inconsistent with his own espoused philosophy, which values benign
individuals more than those who, on balance, cause harm. By that
measure, chickens and fishes are worthier than most humans, who
needlessly cause much suffering and death (for example, by eating or
wearing animal-derived products). Fifth, it's simply unjust to
discount individuals--nonhuman or human--because they're unloved or
less "self-aware" than others. Equitable laws don't accord less
consideration and protection to humans who lack social ties or seem
not to reflect on their past and future. Nonhumans deserve equal
justice.

The fact is, Singer sees only some animals as individuals--those
ostensibly most like himself. A failure to see individuals different
from one's self as individuals is the essence of all bigotries. Just
as racists see individual humans as embodiments of a particular race,
speciesists see individual nonhumans as mere species representatives.
Speciesism's hallmark trait is denial of nonhuman individuality. In
reality, no animal is replaceable. Both physically and mentally,
every sentient being is unique. Every lobster, every crow, every
housefly is an individual who has a unique life experience and never
will exist again. But that's not how abusers see it. For example, the
flesh industry. In the flesh industry's view--and that of
flesh-eaters--chickens, fishes, and other nonhumans can be killed by
the billions each year provided that others of their species remain
available for future killing. Essentially, Singer has the same view.

By requiring that nonhumans demonstrate human-like traits, and by
ranking nonhumans accordingly, Wise and Singer perpetuate the notion
of human supremacy. This notion harms humans as well as nonhumans.
For centuries, whites have figuratively identified blacks with
supposedly inferior nonhuman animals, calling them "monkeys" and
"beasts." The Nazis called Jews "animals" and "vermin." A belief in a
hierarchy of higher and lower beings underlies all notions of human
inferiority: the alleged inferiority of blacks, Jews, women,
foreigners... If there's no hierarchy of living beings, no one can be
denied equal rights and protection on the grounds that they're less
human, or subhuman.

Even if every nonhuman lacked the capacity for human-like reasoning,
nonhumans wouldn't be inferior. Why equate human characteristics with
superiority? Because we possess them? In the same self-aggrandizing
and otherwise-arbitrary way, a superb singer could say, "I can
remember intricate melodies and sing them beautifully. The ability to
do that signifies superiority." Then vocally gifted humans, many
songbirds, and perhaps other nonhumans such as humpback whales would
be at the top of the hierarchy. At the bottom of the hierarchy would
be those creatures who have absolutely no singing ability, such as
Britney Spears. Because human culture features verbal language and
technology, speciesists tend to assess intelligence in terms of these
capacities. However, if we define intelligence as evidence-based
perception undistorted by bigotry and myth, humans compare
unfavorably to other animals. While despising nonhumans as mindless,
members of "the rational species" riot over the outcomes of soccer
games; smoke, eat, and drink themselves to death; poison the air,
water, and soil on which they rely; believe that other religions are
false but theirs is true; and pay to see movies starring Arnold
Schwarzenegger.

Even by conventional human standards, a mature brook trout is in many
ways more cognizant than a newborn or senile human, and the average
pigeon or rat possesses greater learning and reasoning ability than
many humans with mental disabilities. If no nonhuman animal can solve
complex equations or write a philosophical treatise, neither can most
humans. Some humans can't use numbers or words at all.

With regard to basic rights, an individual's degree of intelligence
is morally irrelevant. Degree of intelligence is simply an excuse for
depriving nonhumans of liberty, well-being, and life. The excuse is
inconsistent. Although human persecution based on race, gender, or
some other biological characteristic commonly entails much talk of
inferiority and superiority, few people would welcome laws that
protected humans in proportion to their abilities. In a democracy the
law protects all human animals, whatever their degree of
intelligence.

A democratic society deprives humans of freedom only if they're
believed to have knowingly wronged others. Most nonhumans do not
seriously injure or kill except out of immediate and direct survival
need, as when a lion kills prey. They are innocent of serious
wrongdoing. Because nonhumans who do cause needless harm may have no
sense of wrongdoing, they too should be regarded as innocent (just as
humans who can't distinguish right from wrong aren't held accountable
for injuring or killing another human). In contrast, most humans are
guilty. Whereas predators kill to survive, sport hunters and fishers
wound and kill for fun. Whereas nonhumans rarely prolong the act of
killing, bullfighters, vivisectors, and other humans routinely
torture to death. Each day, flesh purveyors kill millions of birds,
mammals, and fishes for profit. For mere convenience and taste,
consumers eat the remains. Directly or indirectly, most humans
routinely, knowingly participate in the needless infliction of
suffering and death. While boasting of "human kindness," our species
treats nonhumans (and often humans) with extreme injustice and
cruelty.

Among humans, justice is based on innocence and guilt, and a person
is presumed innocent unless compelling evidence indicates otherwise.
Why doesn't the same principle apply across species? Why don't
nonhuman animals--who are innocent--enjoy a legal right to freedom
and life? Speciesism rests on a double standard. We need to
continually expose that double standard.

We need to end the current property status of nonhuman animals.
Today, most so-called "animal" laws legitimize abuse: they simply set
standards for the imprisonment, enslavement, hurting, and killing of
nonhuman animals. Like the laws that codified norms of black
enslavement in America, such "animal" laws should be abolished.
Instead, we need laws that will prohibit humans from violating
nonhuman rights. Ideally, the same laws that protect humans would
protect nonhumans, extending to them all applicable rights currently
reserved for humans.

How can we persuade legislators to enact the laws that we seek? By
persuading the public. We need to convince the public that
vivisection, food-industry enslavement and slaughter, and other forms
of speciesist abuse are morally wrong--atrocities, in fact. To do
that, we need to continually expose the suffering and death that
these practices inflict, as well as the bigotry, illogic, and
injustice of denying nonhumans rights.

Challenge those who accept and participate in speciesist abuse: "If
we don't have the moral right to hurt or kill humans except under
extraordinary circumstances such as self-defense, what gives us the
right to routinely hurt or kill nonhumans? If you think it's wrong to
vivisect a human, whatever their mental capacity, why don't you also
think it's wrong to vivisect a rat? If you wouldn't kill a human and
eat their remains unless you were starving--or not even then--why
will you eat the remains of a slaughtered pig?" If a person responds,
"I just care more about humans, and I don't see anything wrong with
that," press on: "Unless you're unjust, you wouldn't advocate that
members of your family, or your gender, or your race have more rights
than other humans. Then, why do you think it's acceptable for members
of your species to have more rights than other animals? Would you
want your rights to depend on your belonging to the favored group? If
you don't value the life of a rat or pig, the rat or pig does."

When we argue for animal rights, we argue against all forms of
speciesist abuse. If instead we argue based on, say, veganism's
health benefits or vivisection's scientific invalidity, we have to
argue issue by issue, even food by food or experiment by experiment.
Also, such arguments are harmful insofar as they suggest that it's
morally acceptable to harm nonhuman animals if harming them benefits
us. The health argument suggests that it would be fine to eat flesh
if flesh were healthful. The science argument suggests that it would
be fine to vivisect if vivisection were great science. So if you use
health, scientific, and other non-animal rights arguments, please
make sure that you also emphasize that the practices you oppose are
morally wrong.